Pitching L.A. to the Chinese

SHANGHAI — First in an occasional series looking at the increasingly close connections between China and California.

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-- Midway through the first half of the exhibition soccer match this week, the local all-stars were advancing against David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy. The crowd at Shanghai Stadium stood up and roared. In a VIP suite, Jamie Lee hardly noticed the action on the field: She was too busy schmoozing with Chinese reporters.

"One of these days, you should come to L.A. and watch a Galaxy game," Lee, chief rep of the Los Angeles Convention and Visitors Bureau in China, told a journalist from the People's Daily, angling for some publicity from the Communist Party's mouthpiece. "You want to experience the real thing."

Lee uses any chance she gets to sell Los Angeles to the Chinese. Next week she'll be in Beijing for the Dodgers -- that's the L.A. Dodgers, she says -- as the team plays the San Diego Padres in two exhibition games. In April, Lee hopes to capitalize on an Olivia Newton-John fundraiser for cancer research, called the Great Walk to Beijing.

What's the Australian pop singer got to do with Los Angeles? She makes her home in the Southland, Lee says.

If that seems a bit of a stretch, Lee has good reason. In June, China and the U.S. are expected to implement new travel rules that will allow Chinese travel agencies to book tour groups to the U.S. for the first time. And American destinations and companies will be able to advertise directly to Chinese consumers.

That's expected to bring a flood of Chinese tourists stateside -- and Los Angeles wants to grab a healthy share of them.

Some 320,000 Chinese visitors came to the U.S. in 2006 mainly on business and student visas -- and about 110,000 of those came to Los Angeles. Next year, L.A. city officials project that number to climb to at least 170,000, depending on how quickly the U.S. can handle visa applications.

Chinese tourists, with their increasing wealth, could give a boost to L.A.'s economy. But the city will be vying with San Francisco and New York, not to mention global hot spots such as Paris and Sydney, Australia, which have been marketing to Chinese tour groups for years.

That's where the 42-year-old Lee comes in.

Since the bubbly UCLA graduate took on the job nearly two years ago, she's called on many of China's 640 tour operators approved to handle overseas travel, showing them what Los Angeles has to offer -- Hollywood, beaches, great weather year-round -- and how they might design future group packages.